There are six billion people on earth, but it's astonishing how frequently you find yourself talking with someone who has intersected with someone else in your life.
During our just-concluded trip to Europe, we had quite a number of "piccolo mondo" episodes. Here are just four that happened in the last few days:
*On the ship, we befriended a delightful couple from New Zealand. Over dinner last Thursday night, we learned that the gentleman once served as prime minister. He said he has also been a Constitutional lawyer and teacher, and that he and his wife had once lived in Iowa when he taught at the University of Iowa Law School. I asked whether they might ever have met Nick Johnson, an FCC commissioner under President Johnson, whose work influenced Ann and me to get involved in communications policy decades ago; I knew that Nick was a long-time member of the Iowa Law faculty. Turns out they knew Nick well enough to have been his guests for Thanksgiving dinner back in Iowa.
*We took a walking tour through the Cannaregio siestri (district) of Venice. Our guide was a young graduate student of the art of Renaissance from Arizona. He brought us into a dusty workshop (which had served as Tintoretto's studio centuries ago) where men wearing handmade hats of folded newspaper were cutting and carving marble into tombstones for the city cemetery on the nearby island of San Michele. Our guide pointed out the maestro of the shop, a near-deaf 94-year-old man who stood silently as he delicately chiseled the face of an angel into stone. We struck up a conversation with another stoneworker, a man of our age. Upon learning that we were Americans, he reported that he has a nephew who owns a restaurant in Los Angeles on La Brea Boulevard. "What's it called?" our young guide asked. "Al Angelo," the man said. "Wow!" our guide said. "When I lived in L.A., I worked in that restaurant. Piccolo mondo!"
*We were waiting in line at Gatwick for a transfer to Heathrow. I was wearing a fleece jacket promoting the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen (now sadly defunct). A woman tapped my arm and asked, "Are you actually a comedian or just a judge?" "Neither," I replied. "My son is studying film in college and is a comedy writer and improv artist." "Oh, our children do comedy, too," she replied, and said that her daughter's name is Rebecca Drysdale. "We saw her perform in Aspen," we exclaimed. In fact, Rebecca won the top performance award during our first year at the festival. Her material and characters (particularly her musical comedy) made a strong impression on our son, who works in a similar vein. The Drysdales also said their son, Eric, was a long-time writer for Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and was a part of this year's Emmy-winning Colbert writing team. I told them that the sister of a former member of my staff was the sole woman on that writing team. And, to top it off, we discovered that 20 years ago, Eric attended the same college in Boston that our son attends today and had the same (outstanding) writing teacher.
*As I write this aboard our British Airways flight back to the States, Ann is chatting with Norma, the flight attendant. It came up that Norma hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Ann mentioned that she and our son visited the city last July at the invitation of our friend George Clarke, a one-time camp counselor for our son, to attend the premiere of George's independenly financed political/zombie movie (a first for Northern Ireland in countless ways!). No, Norma wasn't at the premiere, but she knew all about the film from local press.
Piccolo mondo, indeed.
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Italy. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
I Love You Trulli: A Visit to Puglia
Puglia is the province on the heel of the boot of Italy. It is a dry land, but by tapping into deep aquifers, the natives have made it a thriving region for growing olives, almonds and cherries. (We're told springtime there is particularly beautiful.)
On our cruise, we arrived in the city of Bari, one of the region's two most important commercial centers. We were taken to the town of Alberobello, about an hour away. This town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains an estimated 4000 examples of an architectural style unique to this region and inspired by a desire to evade taxes: the trullo ("TRUE-low").
Trulli are houses that are built using the native limestone which is constantly being burped up out of the soil - you can see small limestone chunks everywhere amid the olive trees and farmland. The homes and roofs are built as dry walls, without cement. Some of them resemble beehives, but most look like tiny white silos (they are whitewashed annually) with grey roofs (the off-white limestone stacks darkens with exposure).
The drywall construction has its roots in feudal times. The region of Puglia was divided up among feudal lords during the 15th century when the King of Naples ruled over the land. After a lengthy war, the victorious lord allowed the peasants to begin building trullis as homes using the fieldstones, but they were only permitted to use dry construction.
The reason? Periodically, the king of Naples would send his controller around the countryside to assess the taxes he was owed by the feudal lords. Taxation was based on the number of residences standing in the lord's domain. So when word arrived that the controller was on his way, the peasants were ordered to dismantle their homes. This was easily done by removing the keystone, which caused the roof to collapse, so when the controller rode into town, all he saw were piles of stones.
Today, many of the trulli have been adapted into simple but attractive residences, and almost all are still drywall. We were permitted to walk through one, and it was surprisingly spacious considering that the buildings look like hobbit huts from the outside. Some trulli in the countryside have been purchased by Brits and others and refurbished into cozy holiday homes.
The village of Alberobello is charming. It is like no other place on earth, and it's worth a visit.
On our cruise, we arrived in the city of Bari, one of the region's two most important commercial centers. We were taken to the town of Alberobello, about an hour away. This town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, contains an estimated 4000 examples of an architectural style unique to this region and inspired by a desire to evade taxes: the trullo ("TRUE-low").
Trulli are houses that are built using the native limestone which is constantly being burped up out of the soil - you can see small limestone chunks everywhere amid the olive trees and farmland. The homes and roofs are built as dry walls, without cement. Some of them resemble beehives, but most look like tiny white silos (they are whitewashed annually) with grey roofs (the off-white limestone stacks darkens with exposure).
The drywall construction has its roots in feudal times. The region of Puglia was divided up among feudal lords during the 15th century when the King of Naples ruled over the land. After a lengthy war, the victorious lord allowed the peasants to begin building trullis as homes using the fieldstones, but they were only permitted to use dry construction.
The reason? Periodically, the king of Naples would send his controller around the countryside to assess the taxes he was owed by the feudal lords. Taxation was based on the number of residences standing in the lord's domain. So when word arrived that the controller was on his way, the peasants were ordered to dismantle their homes. This was easily done by removing the keystone, which caused the roof to collapse, so when the controller rode into town, all he saw were piles of stones.
Today, many of the trulli have been adapted into simple but attractive residences, and almost all are still drywall. We were permitted to walk through one, and it was surprisingly spacious considering that the buildings look like hobbit huts from the outside. Some trulli in the countryside have been purchased by Brits and others and refurbished into cozy holiday homes.
The village of Alberobello is charming. It is like no other place on earth, and it's worth a visit.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Of Cats, Olives, Graffiti and the Market
The comment we heard uttered most frequently aboard our ship in the past week was, "If this cruise wasn't prepaid., I wouldn't be here." It has been a bit surreal plying the waters of the Aegean and the Adriatic while the pillars of the global economy were crumbling. You can probably look for cruise ship bargains for the next couple of years while our economic ship is being righted.
Our tour of Greece began in Crete (where we elected to stay on board and rest) and ended in Corfu. I won't bore you with too much travelogue - the Greek isles are in fact among the most beautiful on earth, Oia (pronounced EE-yah, on Santorini) is picture-perfect with its whitewashed buildings and cobalt blue rooftops, the Acropolis is awe-inspiring (made even more so as we clambered around it while being buffeted by 30 mile an hour winds and trying to keep our balance on worn-smooth marble), Navplion (in the Peloponnese, the first capital of independent Greece in the 19th century) and Corfu are perfect Aegean/Ionian towns that we'd return to in an instant.
Some notes along the way:
* Cats are everywhere in Greece and Turkey. Apparently no one "owns" them, and there are no SPCAs in the region, but they all appear to be well cared for.... and widely photographed. Ditto for the dogs on the Acropolis and in the ruins of Ephesus (Turkey).
* On every tour we have heard about each region's unique contributions to the olive oil industry. We heard that southern Greece has about 140 million olive trees, and that the Puglia region of Italy (about which more later) has about 50 million trees, and that other regions on our journey had tens of millions. Doing some rough math to account for Turkey, the rest of Greece and Italy, France, and the rest of the Balkans, we've concluded that there are a bajillion olive trees on earth. And to think that it all began (according to myth) with the Tree of Athena atop the Acropolis.
*On a trip to the beautiful old town of Lyon, France about five years ago, we were stunned by the amount of graffiti on its ancient walls. On this trip, we've continued to be amazed at how much graffiti mars the beautiful towns and villages of Turkey, Greece and southern Italy. For those of you who are Philadelphians, you'll know what I mean when I say "Paging Jane Golden!"
Our tour of Greece began in Crete (where we elected to stay on board and rest) and ended in Corfu. I won't bore you with too much travelogue - the Greek isles are in fact among the most beautiful on earth, Oia (pronounced EE-yah, on Santorini) is picture-perfect with its whitewashed buildings and cobalt blue rooftops, the Acropolis is awe-inspiring (made even more so as we clambered around it while being buffeted by 30 mile an hour winds and trying to keep our balance on worn-smooth marble), Navplion (in the Peloponnese, the first capital of independent Greece in the 19th century) and Corfu are perfect Aegean/Ionian towns that we'd return to in an instant.
Some notes along the way:
* Cats are everywhere in Greece and Turkey. Apparently no one "owns" them, and there are no SPCAs in the region, but they all appear to be well cared for.... and widely photographed. Ditto for the dogs on the Acropolis and in the ruins of Ephesus (Turkey).
* On every tour we have heard about each region's unique contributions to the olive oil industry. We heard that southern Greece has about 140 million olive trees, and that the Puglia region of Italy (about which more later) has about 50 million trees, and that other regions on our journey had tens of millions. Doing some rough math to account for Turkey, the rest of Greece and Italy, France, and the rest of the Balkans, we've concluded that there are a bajillion olive trees on earth. And to think that it all began (according to myth) with the Tree of Athena atop the Acropolis.
*On a trip to the beautiful old town of Lyon, France about five years ago, we were stunned by the amount of graffiti on its ancient walls. On this trip, we've continued to be amazed at how much graffiti mars the beautiful towns and villages of Turkey, Greece and southern Italy. For those of you who are Philadelphians, you'll know what I mean when I say "Paging Jane Golden!"
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